Never Post

Mike talks with Know Your Meme Editor-in-Chief Don Caldwell about the prevalence and decline of the Laser Eyes Meme, and the ever shifting place of internet memes in presidential election season; the staff then talks about posts that baffle and confound us. And also: fair play.

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/ for access to extended and bonus segments, and our side shows like “Slow Post”, “Posts from the Field” and “Never Watch”

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for
• and tell us about POSTS THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE

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Intro Links

• EU top court ruling paves way for Apple to pay Ireland over €13bn in taxes – Irish Times
•  Judge Rules $400 Million Algorithmic System Illegally Denied Thousands of People’s Medicaid Benefits – Gizmodo.com
• Brazil Blocks Musk’s X After Company Refuses to Comply Amid Feud With Judge – Time
• Elon Musk Has Backed Himself Into a Corner in Brazil – WIRED
• What to know about Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ feud with a Brazilian judge – AP
• Who are Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin? The 6 commentators linked to Tenet indictment – USA Today
• Who Are Tim Pool And Benny Johnson? What To Know About The Six Right-Wing Commentators DOJ Alleges Were Funded By Russia. – Forbes
• YouTube Deletes Tim Pool’s Embarrassing Kremlin-Backed Videos – Gizmodo
• Media start-up from Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and Dave Rubin was secret Russian influence campaign, indictment alleges – DailyDot
• cohost to shut down at end of 2024 – cohost 

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Laser Eyes

• Laser Eyes – KYM
• Dark Brandon – KYM
• Dark Brandon Explained – KYM
• Fell Out of a Coconut Tree – KYM
• What Can Be, Unburdened By What Has Been – KYM

Find Don:

• https://x.com/doncald
• https://x.com/knowyourmeme
• https://www.instagram.com/knowyourmeme
• https://www.tiktok.com/@knowyourmeme
• https://www.youtube.com/knowyourmeme
• https://www.snapchat.com/p/41102048-8d2d-4288-b54e-c9e89b1afa44/1147140847384576

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What Is Going On Here?

• Twitter — runwildkian
• Reddit — Celebrity Number Six
• Reddit — The fabric
• Google Docs — Hugh’s work
• Reddit — Hugh’s situation
• TikTok — fembasecon

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

All day we leave and arrive at the hive,

concelebrants. The hive is love,

what we serve, preserve, avowed in Latin murmurs

as we come and go, skydive, freighted

with light, to where we thrive, us, in time’s hum,

on history’s breath,

        industrious, identical…

Excerpt of Hive by Carol Ann Duffy

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

Georgia talks with marketing consultant Bryce Whitwam and takes us in and out and further in – maybe further in than any of us have ever wanted to go – to the TikTok shop; Mike talks with media studies professor Shannon Mattern about Drafts – writing while it is still in progress – and how it feels to POST them. Also: Audience participation!

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for

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Find the slides for this live performance on our website.

Intro Links

• J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk Named in Cyberbullying Lawsuit Filed by Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif After Olympic Win (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety
• “it was so nice when you were following legal advice to shut the fuck up” – death angel
• Swifties for Trump? Not so fast-Taylor Swift fires back at Donald Trump's AI-generated endorsement – Marca
• Fans Suspect Taylor Swift Just Subtly Addressed Donald Trump's AI Image Scandal in New Statement – parade.com
• Donald Trump Shares Fake Taylor Swift Endorsement Using AI-Generated Images – Stereogum
• Trump shares AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her fans supporting him – NBC
• anyway here's the story of how i worked with a cafe (isshiki matcha) to import the olympic village muffins for a popup in nyc… – @kelin_online

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The Shop Zone

More of Bryce Whitwam:

• The TikTok effect
• Shanghai Zhan podcast
• Syracuse University 

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Writing is Death

Find Shannon Mattern:

• wordsinspace.net
• shannonmattern.bsky.social

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

It’s slow writing

on re-admission of the abyss

so if this body is sleepy-tired

please walk around

Suddenly there’s nothing

in the laws of the alphabet

that breaks open revealing

what buoyancy am I.

Excerpt of Puberty of Puck, by Mark Hyatt

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

Hans talks with Lia Haberman of the newsletter ICYMI about the ostensible death of the hashtag; Georgia talks with media scholar Whitney Phillips about catching breaking news via internet memes. Also: Hit Em!

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for, like: SEND US YOUR DRAFTS

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Intro Links

• Google has an illegal monopoly on search, judge rules. Here’s what’s next – MSN.com
• Crooked Media, Producer of ‘Pod Save America,’ Reaches Deal With Union, Which Withdraws Claim Company Engaged in Union-Busting Tactics – Variety.com
• After Walkout, Crooked Media Union Reaches Tentative Deal With ‘Pod Save America' Company – MSN.com
• Spotify is full of AI music, and some say it’s ruining the platform – FastCo
• Cartoon Network Website Shuts Down, Warner Bros. Discovery Kicks Visitors Over to Max – Variety.com
• 5 Podcasts for the Constantly Online – NYT
• XOXO 2024 Schedule!

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#DeathoftheHashtag

Find Lia:

• ICYMI newsletter
• Website
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

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Meming the News, Newsing the Memes

Find Whitney:

• University of Oregon site
• Twitter
• The Ambivalent Internet book

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

The idea, the teacher said, was that there was a chaos

left in matter – a little bit of not-yet in everything that was –

so the poets became interested in fragments, interruptions–

the little bit of saying lit by the unsaid–

was it a way to stay alive, a way to keep hope,

leaving things unfinished?

as if in completing a sentence there was death–

– Excerpt of Ars Poetica (the idea) by Dana Levin

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

We respond to your comments!

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

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☎️ Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
🗣️ Drop us a voice note via airtable
📧 Email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
🌐 Leave a comment at neverpo.st
See what interstitials we need submissions for, like: SEND US YOUR DRAFTS

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Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show's host is Mike Rugnetta. 

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure.

Contributing producer Victoria Dominguez attempts to understand the practice of digitally resurrecting deceased loved ones using artificial intelligence. Also: home movies.

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for, like: SEND US YOUR DRAFTS

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Intro Links

• People searching X for updates on California's largest wildfire encounter torrent of porn spam – SF Gate
• I Worked For MrBeast, He's A Fraud – YouTube
• MrBeast employee hits back against whistleblower who called YouTube star a ‘fraud’ – Metro
• The news about MrBeast 'Beast Games' is disturbing – Rosanna Pansino, TikTok
• More 'Beast Games' Allegations Break My Heart – Rosanna Pansino, TikTok
• MrBeast 'Beast Games' Keeps Getting Worse… – Rosanna Pansino, TikTok
• Hoarding Chocolate, Seizures, and Broken Bones — Messages Depict Bad Conditions on 'Beast Games' Project – Distractify via MSN
• ‘Skibidi Toilet’ Film and TV Franchise in the Works From Michael Bay, Adam Goodman — Listen to the Exclusive Interview – Variety 

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BRB AI Links

• BRB2ME -- https://btwinai.com/bring-mom-back

Find Tori: 

• Press Start Podcast (Episode 106, ft. Mike Rugnetta) 
• Twitter: @Tori_as_always
• Website: vdominguez.net

Find Elreacy Dock:

• Website: https://www.elreacydock.com/

Find Elizabeth Schandelmeier:

• Website: Howling Lion Grief Support

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

One winter, he held a rope, lowered me 

by the ankles to the wells bottom. 

I ascended upside-down through the dark thermometer 

with a blood orange in my teeth. He had a beard 

of new snow. I held cold to his pant leg 

while our dog left and snapped at a sound 

in the air only he could hear. When I fell 

in love, he reached out to me and held me down 

when she slinked away on our dirt road alone, 

sheepish, depress. He held me as the constellations 

mingled through the torn curtain.

– Excerpt of My Pietá by Thomas Heise

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

Mike chats with EX Research about their new report which goes deep on Roblox, the massively multiplayer online game played by HALF of all American teenagers. Georgia takes a look at Love Island UK – as many people have over the last few weeks – and asks why so much of that looking is preoccupied with plastic surgery. Also: the sound of touching grass.

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

–

• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for, like: SEND US YOUR DRAFTS

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Intro Links

• War Thunder does it again, this time with classified documents relating to 3 Russian tanks, cyberdaily.au
• It’s happening again: War Thunder players continue to leak classified military documents, dotesports.com
• Commission sends preliminary findings to X for breach of the Digital Services Act, europa.eu
• Musk says EU wanted “secret deal” to “censor free speech” after fine threat, msn.com
• Chasing YouTube, Spotify adds comments to podcasts, techcrunch.com
• An Illinois law requires parents to give 15% of earnings to children who star in their videos, tubefilter.com

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Once Day, We’ll All Be In There

• What’s the deal with Roblox? An EX Special Report – exresearch.co

• Roblox fruit jumpscares, x.com
• This Brokkhaven Roleplay In ROBLOX Be Weird…, tiktok.com
• Pretending to be a spying christmas tree in roblox, youtube.com
• ROBLOX DOORS BUT IT'S ME, youtube.com
• Roblox is down.., youtube.com
• ROBLOX DIFFICULTY CHART, youtube.com
• The nuggets gonna get ya, tiktok.com
• The Strange Origins of "Old ROBLOX Music", youtube.com

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Love Island Face

• https://www.tiktok.com/@jackmacbarstool/video/7379780711802309930
• https://www.tiktok.com/@barrettplasticsurgery/video/7380161281510231326
• https://www.tiktok.com/@anniereneau3/video/7205726511478115630
• https://www.tiktok.com/@boldglamour/video/7206238027528637742
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb6CKuD1GTk
• https://www.tiktok.com/@drgarynyc/video/7384530805407829294

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

What can I tell you? It was a summer that seemed to be

making history — their personal history — almost before

it began, and they stood back slightly, still in it, but

observing it, saying “the summer this,” “the summer that,”

all the while it was going on. They became obsessed with

a fountain, for example, one they walked past each day,

how abundantly it would reach upwards and yet be pouring

back down itself the whole time — all winter this fountain

had been dry, not saying a word. What more can I tell you?

Oh, everything…

Excerpt of No Name by Emily Berry

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

Mike talks with unsung internet pillar DylanPDX, steward of vxTwitter and others, who single-handedly does what Big Social doesn’t want - keeping your embeds working. Senior producer Hans gets the ambrosia from Tallulah Trezevant, an antiquities scholar who ran an experiment to see how fast she would get flushed down the alt-right pipeline when expressing an interest in ancient history online. Also! Some of your favorite hidden corners of the internet.

Show Notes:

Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

–

• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for

–

Intro Links

• Canada demands 5% of revenue from Netflix, Spotify, and other streamers -- Ars Technica
• The Spotify conspiracy theories about “Espresso,” explained -- Vox
• MTV News Website Goes Dark, Archives Pulled Offline -- Variety
• Paramount Axes Comedy Central Site, 25+ Years of Daily Show Clips Gone -- LateNighter
• Why Major Labels Are Suing AI Music Startups Udio and Suno For Mass Copyright Infringement -- Forbes
• Succor borne every minute -- FTC

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vxTwitter with Dylan

Find Dylan:

• GitHub
• Twitter
• Ko-fi

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Antiquity to Alt-Right Pipeline, with Tallulah Trezevant

Find Tallulah:

• The Antiquity to Alt-Right Pipeline -- workingclassicists.com

Other Sources of hope in Antiquity:

• Dan-el Padilla Peralta
• Sarah Debrew
• Ky Merkley

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Favorite Corners of the Internet

• Rad Pro Calculator
• Serebii
• Sporcle Geography Quizzes
• crouton.net
• The Academic Family Tree

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Excerpt of “Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

An episode-long staff round-table about music library management with special guest Meghal Janardan.

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

–

• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure

We respond to you!

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LINKS!

• Angelmamii7 in Limerance
• Burnt toast about burnt toast HEADPHONE USERS BEWARE

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Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for

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Moss’ Email

​​Hi Never Post!

My name is Moss (she/her) and I am trans.

Your recent segment on before and after pics got me thinking about the particular variety of before and afters that are shared online in the trans community. I think that this became a lot more visible to me after being witness to the early chaos of unconstrained trans horniness and wild openness in the early formation of Bluesky last year, which is a whole fascinating bit of platform ecosystem history, especially seeing how much Bluesky has leveled out into something much more "presentable" and twitter-like now that it's operating at scale—but I digress.

On sites like Twitter and Bluesky (and surely elsewhere...) there is an established trend of trans beings (queer beings) sharing before and after pictures of themselves. These are occasioned by trans holidays, like Transgender Day of Visibility, by personal events like transition anniversaries, and by quote chains of such pics (not to mention special occasions of steps taken towards transition). I think it's important to mention these not only as a queer phenomenon, but as something that illuminates how before and afters work for everyone in a variety of situations (as is the case with many things related to transness—it's not [only] about being trans: it's about living more freely). The trans case highlights a few aspects that I want to explore here:

1) The pics, by virtue of being in a trans discourse, would seem to point to something deeper about how life is structured—an identity, a gender—rather than merely an aspect of life—weight, appearance, dwelling, &c.—not of course that identity and gender are not merely aspects of life nor that what seem to be mere aspects are not structuring, but thinking about the weight these are given culturally. What does it mean to see one photo and then another and think, and be encouraged to think by the poster, to see the second as more in line with their gender, as "more woman," "more animal," "more thing," "more man," "more..."? But perhaps above all "MORE THEMSELF." I think we can reasonably be quite ambivalent about this: as your segment points out, the after of the before and after is actually a changing state, and that perhaps it's harmful to over-fix (and that it might fix norms that should be taken as fluid and contextual), but, on the other hand, the fixing function of the before and after photo may be precisely the point for the trans poster—a trans performance to reinforce self. We might further ask, what is visible and what is invisible about transition—does the before and after pic over-reinforce the visible (and how does it then interact with the endless discourse of "passing")? There is also of course a great potential for rupture with norms with queer people—the after often completely rejects standard norms (but then is it rejection or creation...? and so on and so on and so on).

2) The before pic is possibly quite contentious for trans beings, when it is understood to be a pre-transition pic (and not say, both before and after being after the start of transition). This is because there are a ton of frameworks for understanding what one was before transition, and—rightfully—everyone has a different approach: Shall I define myself in opposition to my past? Shall I cut the past off and build myself in the now? Should my transition be understood as an attempt to work with my past, to heal my past, and to continue what is good from it? Is transition not at all a dividing line between me and my past—is it simply an event in a continuous life? Is transition not an event but a continuous process that has been operating since the very moment of my birth? (How many of these are at play at once!?) This makes understanding what is conveyed by the after very difficult. There's a sense in which the before and after flattens all these possibilities into the idea of CONTRAST, of cutting off, of opposition, without precisely exploring what kind of contrast is meant, or whether it is meant at all. There's also a tendency that I've noticed in the commentary (from both the original poster and commenters) on these posts to read them in terms of well-known transition narratives, where before the being was miserable, and after the being is happy and thriving. There's kind of an assertion that this is somehow visible in the picture—that a moment of photography can capture years of pain, years of pleasure—when, of course, life is so complicated, so variegated, even when transition does mark a huge change for the better (and it really does).

3) There is a pretty complicated interaction between the before and after pic and the values of the audience, when the audience is trans (I could also talk about the beings trying to figure out whether they should transition, but I don't want to make this too long). If I come across a before and after pic displaying a change in weight, I might (will) have a complicated emotional reaction, but I myself may not have committed to changing that aspect of myself, and there's a sense that a weight before and after is aimed at a pretty broad swath of the poster's community. But if I come across a before and after transition pic, not only does the pic feel in some sense aimed at me as a member of the trans community, but I in fact have as a trans being already accepted the underlying goals and values of this by committing myself to transitioning—it is something that I myself am trying to accomplish (but of course, not necessarily by the same methods as the being in the pics, and not the same goals). This is not to say that this kind of in-community targeting of before and after pics is unique to the trans community—think for example of before and afters shared in a weight-loss subreddit vs. ones that show up from a friend on your general feed. However, there's a kind of weird way in which being connected to trans people on social media, just as your friends and peers, puts one into a community rather than general discourse.

In any case, I think I have rambled enough—it's a big can of worm spaghetti. Hopefully there's enough wiggle room and questioning here that all beings might find a place to be nurtured from it. Thank you all for your wonderful work on this enjoyable podcast, and thank you for encouraging community input. Keep it up!

Moss

Georgia chats with Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Hilke Schellmann about the job market, and the increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence in hiring. Mike talks with comedian, writer and podcast host Jamie Loftus about her show Sixteenth Minute (of Fame), and the curse of becoming an Internet Main Character. Also! Every YouTube video the team watched in the last two weeks.

Show Notes:

Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/

–

• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voice mail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com
• See what interstitials we need submissions for

–

Intro Links

• Google Cut Back AI Overviews in Search Even Before Its ‘Pizza Glue’ Fiasco –  WIRED
• Ikea is hiring UK workers for its new store in Roblox – Eurogamer
• How 7 Brands Are Engaging Gen Zers with Roblox Experiences – Obsessar
• Nebula Strikes Deal With Spotify to Stream Video Content (EXCLUSIVE) – Variety
• Spotify demonetises all tracks under 1,000 streams – Musictech
• Spotify Announces New Price Increases for Premium Plans – Yahoo Tech
• Spotify raising prices by up to $3 as frustrated subs beg it to “just do music” – Ars Technica
• A New Lawsuit Accuses Spotify of Cheating Songwriters Out of Royalties – Time
• We'll Miss You: Pioneering instant messaging program ICQ is finally shutting down after nearly 30 years – PC Gamer
• Internet Sleuths Finally Find Origin of 'The Backrooms' Creepypasta Image – 404 Media
• Backrooms Research Doc

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Why Is It (Hiring) Like This? with Hilke Schellmann

Find Hilke:

• hilkeschellmann.com
• The Algorithm: How AI Can Hijack Your Career and Steal Your Future

Other Sources:

• OpenAI GPT Sorts Resume Names With Racial Bias, Test Shows – Bloomberg
• AI Bias In Recruitment: Ethical Implications And Transparency – Forbes
• AI in Hiring and Evaluating Workers: What Americans Think – Pew
• AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants – BBC

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Main Characters, with Jamie Loftus

Find Jamie:

• Sixteenth Minute (of Fame)
• jamieloftus.xyz
• Instagram
• Twitter

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta. 

Others were more economical than I, but I

had my red marble. I had action

figures weighing down the drapes

on tiny threads. That twisted, and got smaller.

One door led

to a more economical room

Perhaps a more economical view. The girl

across the hall was the same girl

Except, “Persuasion” by Joyelle McSweeney

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure